How To Create A Lawn Care Bid
Create your own landscaping services bid with Skynova’s bid template. The great thing about the template is that you can customize every part of your bid, from your business logo to any additional notes you want to provide.
All it takes is a few steps. Continue reading to learn how you can make a lawn care bid in minutes.
When Do You Mow Your Lawn
Weekly mowing is the rule, but some lawns require more frequent mowing. However, some grasses grow more slowly and will only need mowing every ten or two weeks. In general, dont jack off more than a third of a grass blade at a time. More than that could be detrimental to the grass.
One of the easiest ways to create a professional landscape bid is using software or a template. If you dont have an idea and time to create one, use the given tips and templates above. They are not only accessible, but they are also easy to use. So, dont hesitate to download them now!
What Not To Do When Expanding Into Commercial Lawn And Landscaping Work
Part of taking the right steps to be successful in the commercial landscaping market means avoiding some costly pitfalls.When youre first starting out, it may be tempting to buy a job to get a foothold with an account. But, thats a lose-lose situation. Stick to your set profit margins.You also have to educate your employees. Just because your sales team is good at landing residential accounts doesnt mean theyll be as successful in the commercial sector. In fact, without the right training, they will probably fail miserably and quit, Delany says.Commercial lawn accounts and landscaping contracts can bring in large checks, but make sure your business isnt too dependent on one account. You need to have a good mix of property types. You dont want to have all of your eggs in one basket, Schill says.With the right business tools and preparation, you can make commercial accounts a profitable part of your landscaping company.If you have the patience and are willing to deal with slow payments and losing/replacing large accounts, Delany says, go commercial.
Want more sales insight and advice? Enter your email below to receive new articles instantly . And be sure to check out our Tip Sheet with practical advice on how to market and sell commercial landscaping work.
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Customize The Lawn Service Business Estimate Form
Select the lawn service estimate form and start customizing it. It would be best if you personalized all areas of the landscaping business estimate template. You must tame the estimate form template like how lawn care service givers tame the lawn. Make the template yours! Do not leave an area untouched. If the estimate form template does not scream your company name in the minds of the clients, then you have not fully tamed or customized the template well enough.
How To Calculate The Cost Of Your Yard For Mowing Services
Having a lush, healthy lawn certainly comes with a feeling of pride in ownership. As a Home Owner, the wide expanse of perfectly-mown greenery is all yours. As beautiful as these sounds, maintaining your lawn to look wonderful can become costly if you are doing it wrong.
If you must have a well-maintained lawn, you will need a professional lawn mowing services to take care of the lawn. A number of factors come into consideration before picking one you will need to consider the cost of their services and the packages they offer.
On average, the cost of lawn mowing will be influenced by the following:
In this post, we will look at how to calculate the cost of your yard for mowing services. Nobody loves being ripped off, and if you can have a fair estimate of what it takes to mow your lawn, you will be better positioned to negotiate properly.
The first line of the note is that when calculating the estimated cost of your yard, the size of the area provides a vital piece of information. Generally, the bigger the size of the yard, the higher the cost of mowing service is going to be.
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How To Bid Lawn Care For Apartments In Bad Shape
The gate creaks when you open it. Long grass whips at your ankles and bushes crawl all over the walls. A dirt patch, filled with weeds, starts rustling.
You’re pretty sure something is living in that overgrowth.
There are no two ways about this: this apartment complex is in dire need of lawn care maintenance.
It’s yours for the taking, but how do your price your lawn care services on a monstrosity like this?
What Is A Lawcn Care Bid
When talking about a lawn care bid, it is an offer created by an investor, dealer, and trader. They use this to purchase services, products, and many more. It specifies the price the potential customers are willing to pay and the quantity of the services they want to avail. Thats why if you are a business owner, its critical to accurately estimate landscaping work if you desire to run a profitable company.
Also Check: How Much Does It Cost For Lawn Mowing
Outline The Project Budget For The Client
After youve estimated all your costs, its time to prepare the bid for the client. Make sure you will be turning a profit on the project by subtracting all of your projected costs from the price you provide in the bid. This is the ultimate determinant of whether or not your project will be profitable.
Write the proposal up in a clear, professional way so your client can see at-a-glance the total cost of the project, while being able to see a cost breakdown.
How Professionals A Win Commercial Lawn Care Contract
In the corporate world, looks matter.
To win the big accounts, you must look like someone who can handle the big accounts:
- Do you have a professional website?
- Can your equipment do the job in time to make you money?
At Service Autopilot, we call that last one Job Costing.
Job Costing tells you how many labor hours it takes to do a job and how much you should charge to make a profit. Its key to making money in this industry.
If you dont know exactly how much it time it takes to maintain a property, you will lose money on your services.
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Determine Your Labor Costs
If youre going to perform the labor for your jobs yourself, you might think you have zero expenses for labor. While you wont have a direct expense, you will have an opportunity cost. If you can make $18 per hour working for a landscaping company and generate only $12 per hour running your own company , you might want to bid your jobs higher when estimating lawn contracts.
If you use contractors to mow lawns for you, their hourly wage is a relatively simple calculation. If you have employees, you must include their salary, payroll taxes, workers comp insurance, uniforms, phones and any other expenses related to them.
Landscape Cost Estimate Sheet
Its vital that you show professionalism and establish yourself as a trustworthy contractor when youre reaching out to potential lawn care clients for the first time. Providing a well-considered landscape cost estimate sheet is the best way to do that.
Whether you use landscape proposal software, a landscape quote generator, or something like a landscaping RFP template, you need to include the specific details about the work youre offering to do, to show you know what youre talking about and offering to do.
What variables that affect landscape maintenance costs?
When youre preparing a landscape maintenance contract template or lawn care bid sheet template, include details about the things that typically affect landscaping costs. You may find some details to include by reviewing a landscape proposal sample PDF, though its important to know some specific details to include.
Details to consider when filling out a lawn care estimate form or lawn care bid template include the current condition of the land and each aspect of the job that tells how much it is expected to cost to get the property to the desired condition. This may include:
- The size of the property
- How many workers it will take to complete the job each visit
- The number of visits required to maintain the property
- The specific services youre offering shown in an itemized list, with estimated costs for each individual service
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The Reality Of Your Market And What It Means To You
Theres a funny thing about lawn care. While you dont want to compete on price thats to say you dont want to be the lowest priced guy out there you will certainly have to be competitively priced.
This means that youll want to close customers on the idea that youre competing with other landscapers on the quality of your service. However, what you need to know about lawn care customers is that they dont have much tolerance for price variations.
If the average price for an average lawn in your area is $35, then youre going to want to stay within $5 of that. Sure, there will always be idiots out there who say theyll do it for $20 but what those customers quickly find is that these low-ballers do a low-ball job of it.
Its funny how so many people will gladly pay more for quality for clothes or when they go out to eat, yet in this business, not so much. Its just a mindset, really. Yet as long as youre diligent and give them a fair bid, youre bound to do very well.
Pricing is one of those critical elements that tends to run a lot of newbies out of the business. Its not a matter of guesswork you need to have a formula for pricing.
Thats true for cutting grass, snow or leaf removal, fertilization, weeding and so on. Lucky for you, there is a way to do this that allows you to be accurate and plan for future revenue and growth as well.
Grow A Sustainable Landscaping Business With Skynova
Skynova helps landscaping companies grow with business support solutions. Using a bid template that converts to an invoice with one action saves precious time. As we all know, time is money needed for any growing business.
Save even more time by exploring other Skynova contract templates, like invoice templates or estimate templates, as well as our software products. Additional benefits include invoice and accounting options that help you to create financial and expense reports. Grow your lawn care business organically with Skynova.
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The Right Way To Bid Your Next Commercial Lawn Care Contract
Here’s the dark side of commercial lawn care…
The commercial world is focused on the bottom line. They will try to skim you.
Businesses only care about the price… unless you can sell them on better service.
Your goal is to differentiate yourself. Look better than the other lawn care businesses bidding on the property.
Here are some other strategies you can use to win a commercial contract:
- Show them the value of a great-looking property. Be visual with your descriptions: What if your lawns were emerald green, and your sidewalks sparkled in the sun? Would this make your customers more likely to buy here?
- Work with your clients, not for them. Get them to collaborate on a landscape design. Ask them what they think a perfect yard looks like.
- Listen to your client. Listen to their problems, and their expectations. They will tell you what they want.
- Teach them about the pitfalls of bad landscaping: inexperienced labor, bad work, and dead lawns will make anyone think twice. Explain why they should never allow uninsured workers near their land.
- Walk in with a professional proposal. If you can hand a business owner a clean, well-formatted step-by-step proposal, you will make a great first impression.
To win your next commercial lawn care contract, you will need a good deal of salesmanship.
Books, YouTube videos, and other B2B sales resources will help you nail the sale.
How To Bid Commercial Lawn Care
Commercial lawn care means earning good profit or big money. But it can also be a big headache if you do it wrong: The charge is too much, and you may lose the contracts. Under the bid, you could lose money. The goal is to achieve commercial lawn care and make a PROFIT, right?
In this guide, I will show you the right way how to bid commercial lawn care than you can handle.
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Capture Labor Costs For Your Lawn Care Service
You work for a living, so it is critical to charge for your landscaping and lawn care services. On the Skynova bid template, you can charge per service or hour or day worked. Input labor costs similarly to how you captured supplies in the previous step.
Underneath “Item,” click on “Service,” “Hours,” or “Days” and describe the labor. For example, a mowing job may take you an hour at $20. Select “Hours” from the “Item” menu. Include the description . Add “20” under “Unit Price” and “2” under “Quantity” to arrive at a total amount of $40.
Where specialist subcontractor services are used, add a description of the specific services, such as “pest control,” “electricians,” or “stonemasons.” Follow the process above to include separate labor charges at different unit prices and quantities to complete this step of your bid estimate. “Expenses” can also be found under the “Item” drop-down menu when you need to include other costs related to your landscaping bid.
Edit & Deliver This Template
The landscaping industry, as a whole, had annual revenues of around $93 billion as of 2018, according to the National Association of Landscape Professionals and, theres a great reason the landscaping industry is so huge. The services provided by companies in this industry add curb appeal and value to the residences and companies served.
When property owners take advantage of a landscapers services, it makes the lawn and surrounding grounds look good while freeing up the property owners time for other tasks. Landscaping tasks, such as lawn care and irrigation offer value for both commercial and residential properties.
Are you a landscaper who is ready to grow your business?
The key ways to expand a landscaping business include adding new services and picking up new lawn care and landscaping clients. As a landscaping professional, however, its likely you already offer a variety of excellent lawn and property care services so, connecting with potential clients and earning some new contracts is an ideal path to business growth.
Whether youre a first-time entrepreneur in the landscaping field creating a business plan for a lawn care startup, or a seasoned professional looking for a commercial landscaping bid template, providing clients with a strong and professional lawn care or garden proposal can help you meet your business goals.
The landscaping bid examples you need are right here!
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Get Maximum Profits When Your Price Apartment Lawn Care
As you bid lawn care at an apartment complex, its important that you remember to base your estimate on what you already know to be successful for you.
Dont try to estimate everything at once, or you can end up overwhelming yourself or miscalculating.
Look at your apartment lawn care bid in small, bite sized pieces, so you can ensure the most profitable pricing.
Now, you have all the free tools, knowledge, and resources you need to start bidding apartment lawn care like a pro!
How To Bid Lawn Care Jobs
Most homeowners do not have enough time to maintain their lawn properly, so they hire lawn care services. Lawn care jobs include mowing, pest and weed control, mulching, leaf cleaning, trimming grass, shrubs & trees, irrigation, snow plowing, etc.
Lawn care jobs are in high demand as regular lawn maintenance increases the property value. In lawn care, business bidding is a very crucial part. The purpose of every business is to make money and profit. You may lose a lot of money if you overbid or underbid.
In this article, we will discuss the critical factors on how to bid lawn care jobs and gain profit. Continue reading to learn more!
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Calculate Your Hourly Labor Rate
How much are you going to charge per person, per hour for the average job? This number should be based on things like the going rate in your area, how much money you want to earn per hour, and how much youre paying your employees.
If youre just starting off, look at the work and estimate the time it will take you to complete the job. Then consider how much you want to make per hour.
Pricing by the hour makes sense because lot size isnt always an accurate pricing metric. For example, garden homes might take you half an hour to complete, even if they are the same size as a quarter-acre lot, which could take you 45 minutes to complete.
Jason Creel explains that your hourly rate is important, but you shouldnt communicate it to your clients.
He explains:
Lets just say that your hourly rate is $60 per hour. Now, youre not going to speak to the customer and say, hey, I charge $60 an hour, so Im going to time myself when I cut your grass, and then multiply that by 60. Youll quickly learn how to estimate and then multiply that in your mind.
Pro tip: if youre just starting out and not sure about how long a lawn will take, keep track of the time it takes you to complete the job using time tracking software or a stopwatch. From there, find the average of your labor hours over time before figuring out exactly what speed you work at.
Prefer watching a video? Jason Creel talks about pricing out lawn care services below:
